


all of us crazy soldiers

by focacciabread



Series: calico skies [3]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Family Dynamics, M/M, booker is there super tangentially, but I don't want anyone clicking on this expecting the uuuuuAH?, idk honestly there's not a lot to tag, ish, the idea of booker is there for most of it really, theres not a home renovation tag but there is one for home improvement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:54:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26415994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/focacciabread/pseuds/focacciabread
Summary: “Horses?” Nicky says.“You know, horses,” Nile says, clearing up nothing. “Like, when you pass some of them in a field or something, you point and say ‘horses.’ Some people do it with cows, but I think that takes the fun out of it.”“Ah,” Nicky says, slowly. “An American ritual, then?”“I think it’s more of a ‘less than 900 years old’ thing, honestly.”Nicky hums. “So much is.”Or: A post-movie epilogue about being human together ft grocery stores, phone calls, car rides, shitty food, football games, and the wild hubris that you can renovate your own house without professional help.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: calico skies [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918177
Comments: 80
Kudos: 566





	all of us crazy soldiers

**Author's Note:**

> hey everyone here’s the post movie epilogue it is NOT 3k like I said it might be, oops
> 
> It’s a bit of an au based on the end of movie flash forward bc like booker drinking alone in France makes me too sad
> 
> title again from calico skies (listen to it) also this can totally be read alone

Early summer in Missouri means pollen in the air thick enough that Nicky’s nose nearly twitches with allergies he has not worried about in 900 years.

There are two reasons they have chosen the landlocked heat of the American Midwest for their period of lying low: it is both far, far away from any trace of Merrick or his men and none of them could say no to the way Nile’s face had lit up with longing upon hearing about a potential return to the states. So here they are.

Everything in America seems to be so far away from itself; a short drive from their new safe house to the nearest town reveals several miles of sprawling crop fields, barely a person or home in sight. There are horses, however.

“Horses,” Nile says, as they pass a field of them. She is seated in the front seat as Nicky drives, a task he does not particularly treasure. Cars still feel incredibly new; he much prefers to be in the passenger seat as Joe takes the wheel, to watch Joe’s profile and wild hair in the wind. Alas, today their tasks have been divided, and Nicky drives without him.

“Horses?” Nicky says.

“You know, horses,” Nile says, clearing up nothing. “Like, when you pass some of them in a field or something, you point and say ‘horses.’ Some people do it with cows, but I think that takes the fun out of it.”

“Ah,” Nicky says, slowly. “An American ritual, then?”

“I think it’s more of a ‘less than 900 years old’ thing, honestly.”

Nicky hums. “So much is.”

They lapse back into quiet. It’s not quite uncomfortable, but something hangs in it nonetheless. Unhappiness, Nicky thinks. They are both—sad.

With good reason—it’s been a few weeks since they gave Booker his sentence, and it has not been an easy time. The status quo, the surface tension that held them all together for so long, has been so thoroughly shot to shit that Nicky feels that he himself is almost unrecognizable from who he was several months ago. Who is he, without Andy as a constant, unshakable anchor? Who is he without Booker, his friend of nearly 200 years? Who is he to Nile, so young with the world on her shoulders? He can only feel bone deep relief that Joe is still at his side, for at the very least Nicky is certain that without him, he would be utterly lost. He feels almost guilty about it however, taking refuge in Joe’s arms, when the rest of his family lies in shambles. At the same time, it is impossible to imagine going without.

Nile is quiet for a different reason, something Nicky does not want to bring up: her family. He has often caught her looking at her phone’s lock screen, just gazing at the faces of her mother and brother. At times like those, Nicky is not quite sure what to say. He isn’t certain that she’s ready to talk about it, or indeed, ready to fully accept that this is her life quite yet. For all the changes he has gone through in the past months, they pale in comparison to Nile’s transformation.

“Oh shit, they have a HyVee,” Nile says, interrupting Nicky’s thoughts. “Pull in here.”

The parking lot is black and expansive as they walk to the front doors, heat still radiating up several feet though the sun has long since set. For the minute of travel, they are wrapped in warmth, the smell of melting tar filling the air.

“You grab a cart,” Nile says once they’re inside, “and meet me in the kitchen section. If we’re lucky, they’ll still have some of their gross make-at-home pizzas.” She turns on her heel and strides away as Nicky smiles after her; it’s funny, to be commanded by someone as achingly young as Nile, but then again, it’s a role she assumes with a natural sort of grace. He has followed her into battle once, and he will again.

When Nicky catches up to her, Nile is balancing two pizza boxes and what looks like a very cheap bottle of wine in her arms.

“Hey.” She toasts him with the bottle when she sees him. “This is going to be gross, but it was like, six dollars, so.” Nicky’s face contorts a little in disgust and Nile laughs. “You guys are so European, it’s insane; I bet you’ve never had wine worth less than, like—you know, I’m not even really sure what good wine costs.”

“Perhaps more than six dollars,” he says, taking it from her to look at the label. “We can afford to buy better wine than this, if you would like.”

Nile rolls her eyes. “If we’re going to eat shitty pizza—and we are—we’re not pairing it with some hundred-dollar bottle of pinot noir.”

“Hm,” Nicky says, but he is not going to argue. Unless— “are there olives on that?”

“Oh, yeah,” Nile says, looking down to the uncooked pizza in her hand. “They had a veggie one, thank God.” She notices his face and scrunches up her nose. “The one underneath it is sausage?”

“Better, I suppose.”

Nile regards him for a moment. “You’re kind of picky for someone who’s been alive nearly a millennium.”

“Perhaps that is my secret to how I look so young, yes?” Nicky says, and pushes the cart forward.

It is nice, to shop with Nile. Even after months with her, she has an energy, a newness, that feels like taking a long, deep breath of fresh air after hours in a stale room. Compared to the rest of them, she is practically an infant, but there is a weight in her eyes that tells Nicky they could not have asked for anyone better to join their odd little unit. For her sake, however, he does wish for better timing, for her to have joined them someday previous when they were truly whole.

Driving back, the sky has darkened completely, the unlit street beckoning. Nicky switches on the vehicle’s headlights and Nile rolls down her window and hangs one arm out; insect calls fill the car with a whirring rhythm.

***

“Nicky, what is this you’re feeding us?” Joe says, holding a drooping slice of pizza. A green pepper slice is in the process of sliding off, carrying most of the cheese with it.

“If you would prefer,” Nicky says, nose wrinkled, “the other is _sausage_.” Joe raises an eyebrow.

“Oh my _God_ ,” Nile says, taking another bite. “I should have known you’d both be snobs—it’s not _supposed_ to be good.”

“Ah,” Joe says, the start of a smile on his face. “I see. Is that the same reason we have this,” he pauses, “wine?”

“I’ll go get something from the basement,” Nicky says as he starts to rise from his chair.

“No!” Nile says. “Get a glass and share this with me—it can’t be any worse than church wine, right Nicky?”

“Ah,” Joe says. “But Nicky has not been to Mass in—” He looks to Nicky, questioning.

“Several hundred years,” Nicky finishes. “There was much more urgent work to be done and I have too much time to be forgiven for my lapses.”

“Weren’t you a priest, though?” Nile says. “Do you—miss that?”

Nicky thinks of the seminary so long ago. The memories bear so much wear from time that he can really only recall a few still images—hazy light in the chapel, the heavy smell of incense, the heavier weight of his stole.

“There are always things to miss,” Nicky says. “But I do not wish I could go back—besides, the priesthood in 11th century Italy was probably not what you are picturing.”

“Probably not,” Nile agrees, pouring the wine. They drink, and Nicky is indeed reminded of the sour taste of communion.

“Ooh,” Nile says scrunching up her nose. Joe and Nicky look to each other, smiling a little. “No, this is worse than church wine.” She swirls her cup, considering, and then puts it down. “Okay, _fine_ , you can go get something better from the basement.”

Joe laughs as he gets up from the table.

Andy does not eat with them, though she would probably not complain about the food as he and Joe have done. She has gone outside her room very little since they arrived at the safe house and when she does emerge, Nicky cannot place the look in her eye. He supposes that if he is having a crisis of self, he can only imagine what is happening in Andy’s head. To lose the thing that you are after over six millennia, to become something so totally new—Andy can fight her way out of anything, but the battle she is facing now is an entirely novel one. Nicky does not begrudge her the time alone.

Nile retreats to her room after dinner, leaving Joe and Nicky to clean up.

“Hey,” she says to their looks as she pushes back from the table. “I cook, you clean, that’s how it works.”

“Ah,” Joe says, smiling. “Thank you then, for the meal.”

“Anytime.” And then they are alone.

Nicky is placing their dishes in the sink when he feels the weight of Joe’s arms around his waist and his chin on his shoulder. He pauses to lean back into it.

“Hmm,” Joe hums. Nicky listens for him to continue, but nothing follows. He closes his eyes and waits. After a moment, Joe speaks and the vibrations of his voice rumble through Nicky’s chest as well. “I’m am tired, Nico.”

“Yes,” Nicky says, and lets it rest there. They are holding each other up, here in the kitchen, and Nicky takes a moment to just revel in it, the feeling of being borne. For a moment, he tries not to think of anything else, of the fallout of the past few months, of the things he must mourn. Instead, he leans back against Joe and breathes him in with an empty mind.

“If I do not let you go,” Joe says, “I will fall asleep on my feet.”

Nicky tightens his hands where they lay on Joe’s. “If you do not let me go, we can both rest right here.”

“Mm, but I much prefer to have you in a bed,” Joe says, a smile coloring his voice.

“Scoundrel.” Nicky imagines he can feel the upward curl of his lips as Joe kisses his neck and pulls away.

They clear the rest of the kitchen in silence. The house they have taken up in was bought decades ago, and it was old then—old a relative term, of course. Its age is reflected in the peeling wallpaper and green formica countertops; there are signs of mice in the pantry and the humid air has formed bubbles in the walls that are painted. It is not quite falling apart.

Perhaps that is what he will do in this strange interim.

“Joe,” he says. “Do you think this house contains a ladder?”

***

He is stripping wallpaper when he sees Andy out of her room for the first time in days. The work is more strenuous than he had expected—the paper seems almost fused to the wall in places. He is scrubbing at a particularly stubborn piece with a ferocity that makes his arms burn when he catches movement from the corner of his eye.

“That seems about as pointless as the wallpaper itself, Nicky,” Andy says. She sits on the couch, eating an apple with incredible efficiency. Nicky remembers that about her—hundreds and hundreds of years of survival have made Andy a professional in rending most anything of its flesh.

“Ah, but boss,” he says, holding up a piece of the garish lined pattern he has managed to tear from the wall, “if I do not, I will be driven mad by looking into its abyss.”

“Close your eyes, then,” she says, but she remains seated to watch him finish the job. It passes in comfortable silence, filled occasionally with her crisp bites and his muttered swears.

When he has almost cleared the wall, Nile and Joe return from where Nicky has sent them to get paint.

“Nicky, I don’t want to—whoa,” Nile says, having caught sight of the piles of discarded wallpaper. “You got a lot done in an hour—anyway, after having been a passenger with all three of you, I can now definitively say that Joe is the best driver.” With an amused twist to his mouth, Joe executes a bow as best he can while holding two paint cans.

“What, did he show you how he likes to drive with his knees?” Andy says, a slight smile on her face.

“ _You_ ,” Nile says, pointing at her, “drive like you don’t care if the people in the car live or die.”

“Normally I don’t,” Andy says with a shrug.

“What’s my sin?” Nicky asks.

Nile grimaces. “Look, I know you’re like, incredibly old, but if you actually go the speed limit, I promise you—everyone else on the road wants you dead.”

“She wants to go fast, but is afraid to die, hm?” Nicky says, looking to Andy with a smile.

“Have any of you actually take a driving test?” Nile says, setting her bag on the floor and leaning against the couch. “Ever?”

“Why would we need to,” Joe says with a grin pointed at Andy, “when cars are sure to be just a passing fad?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Andy says. “They still might be, you know one hundred years is nothing.”

The paint they have bought him is a bright yellow.

“I picked that out,” Nile says. “Joe wanted to play it safe with some beige.”

“That is what the walls are now!” Joe says. “Yellow will not fit the rest of the house.”

“You’re insane if you think the rest of the house is staying the way it is.”

“Yellow will be good for this room,” Nicky says. He has two more walls to strip, but he can imagine the room now, splashed in gold. It will be—nice.

“If we’re doing a complete renovation, I’ve always wanted a red couch,” Nile says, eyes focused somewhere else. “Thousands of years, you guys got enough cash saved for one of those?”

“I think we might,” Joe says, laughing.

***

“So you see, cutting at an angle allows for the zucchini to absorb more heat, sauces, flavor,” Nicky says, demonstrating. He looks up to Nile where she is seated on the kitchen table, feet planted on one of the chairs.

“Right, I mean, I’ve watched the food network before,” she says, using one hand to eat a bit of shredded cheese out of the bag. “I also worked three different food service jobs. You don’t have to teach me in the, like, old Italian fashion; I’ve eaten food from old recipes and it’s mostly pretty bad.”

“Ah,” Nicky says, a little at a loss. “Joe?”  
“I suppose we’ll just have to teach you to drink in the old Italian fashion then, hm?” Joe says.

“If I say I don’t love red wine will that ruin the whole thing?” Nile says. She pauses in a way that makes Joe and Nicky look to each other in anticipation of her speech. “So, speaking of teaching, are—are you guys going to like…?”

“Are we what?” Joe says.

“Are you going to teach me to fight or something?” Nile says. “Is there a gun range around here somewhere, or—or some kind of insane weapons shed?”

“You know,” Joe says. “There might be—there is at least one house where Andy has buried an axe in the yard.”

“Brazil?” Nicky says, recalling.

“Ah, that’s it.”

“So are you?” Nile says, drawing them back on topic. She leans with her elbows on her knees, eyes darting between them.

They look to each other again.

“Forgive us,” Nicky says, “but at this moment, I don’t think either of us particularly relish the idea of exchanging blows with you.”

“You will learn from your mistakes on the battlefield,” Joe says. “Experience will prove a better teacher than he or I could ever be.”

Nile’s face contorts a little. “That sounds—painful.”

“It will be,” Joe says, his voice apologetic.

Nile looks contemplative, but nods. “Okay. In the meantime, do you want any renovation help, Nicky?”

“Of course,” he says. “Anyone who proves to have better taste than Joe is welcome aboard.”

“May I remind you what you are wearing?” Joe says, eyebrow raised.

“Again, going on about my clothes—it is practical to wear this in a fight, Joe,” Nicky says, gesturing towards his shapeless shirt and comfortable pants.

“Ah, I apologize,” Joe says. “I did not realize we are currently under attack.”

“Gross, stop it,” Nile says. “But Joe’s right, Nicky, you dress like—a stepdad.”

Joe laughs loudly, and Nicky cannot help his smile. “Oh, thank you Nile, another finally in the camp of reason,” Joe says. “He has been long poisoned by Andy’s call to practicality.”

“And what is the practicality of that hat of yours, hm?” Nicky says.

“It keeps the hair out of my face, of course.” Joe is smiling in a way that makes the back of Nicky’s neck tingle, still.

“Mm,” Nicky says, tilting his head.

“What hat?” Nile says.

“Perhaps she will decide for us,” Joe says, pushing up from the counter he had been leaning on to go retrieve it.

Nicky rolls his eyes to Nile’s questioning glance. “You will understand when he returns—I love him, but he cares for things I never will.”

The stairs creak as Joe descends them, wearing the baseball cap in the way he has taken to in the last few decades. He is handsome, of course, but the grin on his face is too knowing for Nicky’s liking. He glances to Nile. “See what I mean?”

“What?” Joe says, still grinning as he leans up against the counter once more.

Nile looks unimpressed. “Yeah, I see what you’re saying, that is definitely on purpose.”

“I see,” Joe says. “It must look very bad then, and you never want to see me wear it again, yes Nicky?”

“You villain.” Nicky cannot keep a smile from his face. “You are mad with power.”

“I will tell you a secret,” Joe says, stepping closer. “The true reason I wear it like this is so nothing gets in the way when I—” He kisses Nicky, just briefly. “Nothing besides that nose of yours, of course.”

“This is worse than the couple I lived with in college,” Nile says. “At least their fights were fun to watch. A few months? Is that all it takes to be making out in front of me? I’m basically your work colleague.”

Nicky shrugs. “He kissed me in the van on the way to the lab.”

“He _what_?”

***

They are already lying in bed when Andy knocks once against their door and calls, “Goodnight Nicky, Joe.” They listen as her footsteps fade down the hall. Sometimes, as it does now, Joe’s name strikes him—they have changed themselves too often for Nicky to be surprised by the newer title, but nonetheless, sometimes something about it gets stuck in his teeth.

“Hm,” Nicky says. “Joe.” He emphasizes the first letter, slightly. Joe hums a question, but Nicky merely hums it back to him.

“Ah,” Joe says after a moment, “I think I know what this is about—out with it, then.”

“Sometimes, I do not like the name you’ve taken,” Nicky says, adopting the refrain Joe has heard many times in the latest hundreds of years. “The letter J, it is—too new.”

“You can’t say that about everything that is younger than us, my love,” Joe says, the breath of his laugh skating over the back of Nicky’s neck. “We are just lucky our names were things that could be translated. Imagine you were named Napolino—what would you go by then?”

Nicky holds the hand on his chest, playing with Joe’s fingers. “Indeed, the French have ruined that name very thoroughly.”

A silence falls between them; they are both thinking of the same thing.

Booker’s betrayal isn’t something Nicky has dwelled much on—he can’t quite bring himself to, not yet. He almost can’t feel the pain of it over the inky black numbness that the loss has put in his chest. Almost, but not quite—the pain is there, lurking on the fringes, ready to pounce if Nicky lingers too long on the thought.

He knows Joe is angry, and indeed, Nicky has not been spared the pressure of that emotion behind his own eyes. It is a hard thing, to love someone as they love Booker and to wonder if they might now regret that love. To now understand the friendship they enjoyed from Booker was uneven; while they feasted in each other and their friends, Booker was starving. It is almost worse that he is sorry now, that perhaps he was sorry the entire time, worse that there was something sad and lonely brewing in him for years, as meaningless as those units of measurement have become to them now.

“You know,” Joe says. “I miss him.”

“I know.”

“You never want to watch a game with me.”

“You know I do not care to know the teams,” Nicky says, waving a hand. “They always seem to be wearing the same colors.”

“No, you do not.” There is a small smile in Joe’s voice. It quickly disappears. “I wish—I could have loved him better, that he would not be so desperate for a way out of this life.”

“I think his melancholy would have taken root no matter what we did,” Nicky says, closing his eyes. “It is a hard thing, to lose your family.”

“But _we_ are his family,” Joe says, angry again. “And he made every choice to lose us.”

Nicky hums in sad agreement. “And he has.” They sit with it for a moment.

“A century is—it is a a good deal of time,” Joe says. Nicky has been thinking about this as well. As little time as it is to them—even less to Andy, though now the concept of years hangs a little differently on her—a century will be more than one third of Booker’s life. He has already spent much of it in mourning.

“Yes,” Nicky says. “Perhaps—it feels cruel that he will never see Andy again.”

“It is too bad,” Joe says with weariness weighing each syllable, “that Nile won’t know him before we lose Andy too.”

Nicky is sick of the talk of loss, the way it never ends. There is always something to lose, always some way to mourn it. If he grieved everything for its deserved amount of time, his head would be permanently bowed.

“I wonder if that will hinder them,” Nicky says, lost in the thread of what their lives will become. “If she will begrudge him after Andy is gone.”

Joe huffs. “She was the one ready to let him back with an apology.”

Indeed, though the debate about Booker’s fate had carried on for hours, Nile had been steadfast.

“He did what he did in the first place because he felt—alone,” she had said, eyes bright. “I know I’m new here, but to me it seems like the punishment is exactly what led to the crime.”

“So he can merely apologize and it all goes away?” Joe had said, more weary than angry now. “This time is not only for him to regret, Nile; we need it as well, to forgive him.”

Nicky agrees, then and now. There is a cloud that hangs over all of them after Booker’s betrayal, and it will take time to dissipate. There would be no use inviting Booker back only for their resentments to fester. They must clear it all out, must process their grief and anger without seeing the reminder that is the man who caused them. When Booker rejoins them, they will be ready for him.

Silently, though, as Joe’s breathing evens out behind him, Nicky wonders if that day will ever come.

***

“We are not getting green tiles for this kitchen, Nicky,” Joe says, shaking his head. “Absolutely not.”

“They are not green,” Nicky says, not looking up from the hardware store catalogue. “They are plain—I will paint them in patterns, like the ones in our house in Greece. You loved it then.”  
“The years have blurred your memory very conveniently, my love,” Joe laughs. “I did _not_ love those tiles.”

Nicky hums. “Now which of us is remembering incorrectly? I have a very distinct memory, you said—”

“It had only been one hundred years, we were young!”

“You said, ‘Nicolo, if I were but a potter, you would never want for tiles—I would pave the street with them if you so wished.’ Hm?” Nicky looks to Joe with a smile. “Where has that man gone? Would you not still pave the street for me?”

Joe groans. “That man has died, as you should have upon hearing such a line,” he says, and sighs. “Do you wish the streets tiled?”

Nicky tilts his head for a moment, then lets Joe off the hook. “I suppose I can live without.”

“My back thanks you,” Joe says. “And my eyes will thank you more immensely if you abstain from those patterned slabs upon our floor.”

“I wish I could,” Nicky says with a false frown. “But Nile is already excited to help—unless I should tell her we will remain with the…linoleum?”

Joe laughs. “I would not damn you so.” In his lament, he has inched closer and closer to where Nicky is standing at the counter. Now, he kisses Nicky briefly, but remains inches from him. “The whole kitchen?”

“The whole kitchen.”

Joe kisses him again, lingering this time. “One in every five tiles is patterned.”

“Every other,” Nicky says, kissing him back, this time swiping his tongue over Joe’s lower lip. This is an old game, and they are expert players.

“One in three.” It is punctuated with a very long kiss, so long that by the end of it Nicky finds himself pushed back against the counter, panting slightly.

“One in three,” he agrees, leaning back into Joe before his smile gets too smug.

***

Nicky is clearing away weeds in the back garden—though the flora is so different here, he cannot honestly say which are pests and which are not—when he hears what sounds like weeping.

He follows the sound—the house is on a substantial piece of land, probably once used for tending some kind of animal. Nicky can imagine chickens roaming the fields, or goats, meandering under the shade of several old trees.

It’s under one of those trees that he finds Nile, her head in her hands. For a moment, Nicky is frozen, not quite sure what to do. The part of him that remembers the shame of tears that came with youth wishes to leave Nile by herself, that this moment of hers not be invaded. However, there is another, stronger part of him that realizes the futility of ignoring an event like this in the hope it disappears. After so many years, Nicky has at least learned his lesson about festering wounds.

“Nile,” he says, and her head snaps up.

“Shit,” she says, wiping at her eyes. “ _Shit_ , fuck, sorry.” She laughs a little, in the way that comes so easily after tears.

“May I—” He gestures towards a spot next to her. She throws out a hand as if to say _go ahead._ He sits.

They are quiet a moment, listening to the birds and bugs in the air above them. Nicky feels the prickle of the long grass at his elbows, one that will quickly grow into an itch he will ignore.

Nile sighs, loudly. “I’m just—missing my family.” Nicky nods, though she’s not really looking at him. “It’s—my brother, he would have been getting ready to go off to college around now and I—” Her face crumples a little. “God, I just fucking _miss_ them.”

It’s painful to watch her; she wears her loss so heavily on the front of her face.

“Like, I’ll see the exact model of my mom’s car, or I’ll think of some dumb shit me and him did as kids together and I think ‘oh, I’ve gotta tell them about this,’ and then—I’ll remember,” Nile says, smiling with a wobble. “I can’t.”

“I’m sorry, Nile,” Nicky starts.

“No, no, don’t apologize, I mean,” she wipes her nose on her sleeve, “I get it. I get why it has to be like this, it’s cleaner, they’re not in danger because of me,” Nile says. “It all makes sense, I guess.”

“That doesn’t mean it does not hurt.”

“Yeah,” Nile agrees. “It hurts like hell.”

Nicky remains quiet with her—there’s not much he can say. What little family he did have upon entering the seminary was not especially sad to see him go, but nor was he to leave them behind. If he tries very hard, he can sometimes recall what he thinks is his mother’s face, though it is more likely to be a piece of his imagination, a combination of women he’s seen over hundreds of years. Perhaps it is true that she called him Nicolino once. Perhaps it is not.

“When my dad died,” she says, breaking the silence, “it was—bad. I mean, I cried for weeks. I would hide under my bed or in my closet because I didn’t want my mom to find me—she already had enough to deal with, right? So I would just sit in my tiny closet in the dark and cry my eyes out, like, holding my breath so no one could hear me. I thought I was getting away with it too, until one day I was crying, getting snot, like, all over my school shirt, and my brother crawls in the closet with me.” She takes a deep breath, a little shaky again. “He was a little kid, he probably didn’t really get what was going on, but he just—you know, he just grabs my hand.” She’s crying again in earnest now. “And it’s this thing, where we’re both holding onto each other and I’m thinking ‘God, I’ll just die if anything happens to him, too,’ and I can see in his eyes that in his tiny little baby brain, he’s thinking the same thing about me.

“And I really, really want to be there with him now, with both of them, and I _hate_ that they’re hurting because of me.”

“It’s not your fault,” Nicky says, quietly.

“Yeah, I know,” Nile says, scrubbing at her eyes. “But they’re still hurting, and I’m still not there, and thinking about this whole thing makes me feel like shit, so.” She gestures towards her face. “Here we are.”

Nicky takes a moment to think about it. He will not tell her she might see her family again—it would be cruel, to promise such a thing when he knows the slim chances of its deliverance. It is equally useless that he try to commiserate with his own experiences. Instead, he extends a hand.

“I know it is not the same, or enough,” he says. “But I am here to hold onto, whenever you need.”

Nile looks down at his hand and smiles a little, despite the fresh tears still on her face. She takes it, gently at first, and then squeezes hard.

They sit in the shade, listening to cicadas, until the sun goes down.

***

Renovating the house proves to be more effort than Nicky had originally planned. Each flaw he unearths seems to lead to a dozen more that must be fixed first. Looking into the leak in the upstairs bathroom sink leads to the unveiling of corroded pipes, and correcting a rotted plank on the porch had lengthened into a project of several days when he’d encountered several raccoons who had made their home under the boards. Somewhere, Nile has videos of he and Andy removing them with very little strategy and very many curses. The last several weeks have been—not busy, for there’s little urgency to anything he’s doing—but occupied. He does not mind.

By stripping the main living area completely of its wallpaper, he has revealed countless raised spots where the paint bubbles away from the wall. Nicky has been sanding them down for much of the afternoon when Andy enters the room—it is without a word that she takes up a second scraper and joins in.

Some time later, he becomes aware of Nile in the doorway. She stands, for a moment, watching them.

“Are you guys really going to be completely silent the entire time you do this?” she says at last, sounding amused. Instead of responding, Nicky tosses Andy some sandpaper over his shoulder and she catches it without looking to him. He looks back to the wall to hide his grin as Nile bursts out laughing. “Oh, fuck off.”

It’s gratifying, to see her laugh, especially after the day they grasped hands in the shade. He thinks—hopes—that perhaps something has lifted from her eyes since then. Not enough, but something.

“There is always room for one more,” Nicky says, brandishing a scraper to her. She looks to be considering for a moment, but then shrugs.

“Have you done this wall yet?”

This is how Joe finds them all, kneeling and standing and sitting as they peel back the layers of the wall together. Their progress is mostly marked by the plasticky flecks of beige paint littering the floor and stuck to the sweat on their fingers. When he looks, he sees Andy has quite a bit in her hair.

“I see,” Joe says. He is smiling when Nicky looks up. “No one thought to invite me?”

“Wherever I am, you know you are welcome,” he says, just to see Joe smile at it.

“So, Andy,” Nile says, brushing her hands off on her sweatpants. “How do you deal with,” she gestures between Joe and Nicky, “their whole ‘perpetual honeymoon phase’ thing?”

“It’s actually a lot worse when they’re fighting,” Andy says. Her hair is half falling into her face and sprinkled with flecks of beige. “If you can believe it.”

“You guys fight?” Nile says with no small amount of disbelief. “You?”

There is almost certainly a look on her face to match her tone, but Nicky is a bit too lost in Joe’s expression to glance over to confirm it. With Joe, it is so easy to get swept up, and Nicky is long past the stage in his life where he would try to resist. Instead, he leans back on his heels and drops into it, the warmth of being regarded by him.

“Yes,” Joe says. “We fight.”

“Less and less,” Nicky says. “I challenge you to hold a grudge against the man who has seen you at your worst and dirtied his hands dragging you from it.”

“Right.” Nile’s voice is dry. “I’m starting to get why Booker drank so much.”

Her words have barely hit the air before it feels as though it has been completely sucked out of the room. Because Nicky is watching his face so closely, he sees the twist on Joe’s expression upon hearing Booker’s name. The look is bitter and sad, one that mirrors the feeling in Nicky’s stomach almost exactly.

“Sorry, I—” Nile begins, but Andy cuts her off.

“No, Nile.” Her voice is tired. “I think we—have more to discuss, about Book.”

“I was wondering if we could,” Nile says slowly, looking between the three of them. “There’s stuff I need to—I’m not going to ask you to bring him back in, but I need someone to talk to, someone who—gets it.”

Were this hundreds of years ago, Nicky might be hurt by the implications of her statement. Now, however, he understands. So many things have changed over the years and centuries they have been alive that at times it feels like the only thing that keeps him whole, keeps him solid, is that, in Joe, Nicky is entirely known. The only way he has managed to stay sane is to anchor himself to another moving piece, so their orbit is only of each other. He mourns for Nile, who does not have such a thing. Contacting Booker will not fill the exact niche for Nile that Joe has for Nicky—he challenges any person on earth to replicate that—but none of them here can offer her the commiseration Booker will.

Andy nods. “You need someone who’s been alone.”

“I hate to call our attention to it,” Joe says, a bitter twist to his words. “But perhaps Booker is not the best source on how to cope with such a thing, hm?”

“I told you,” Nile says, but the air of anger that was present as they argued Booker’s fate is no longer about her. “That’s why it was fucked up to send him away alone.”

Joe shakes his head. “He betrayed us when we were with him; at least this way he can only deceive himself.”

“He needs _help_.”

“And we would have gladly given it if he had asked!” Joe’s eyes are shining now. “We would have given him anything—he made his decision, Nile.”

“And you’ve made yours,” she says. “But I’m entitled to my own choice.”

“Fine,” Joe says, blowing out a breath. “Write him, call him, if he will respond. I will not.”

Privately, Nicky agrees with Joe, at least for now. He wants to be able to face Booker with no ill-will at all, to be able to forgive him completely before he faces him again. He is beginning to think, however, this might be a pointless fantasy. Somewhere within him, he feels the resentment, hard, like a pit. It will not be so easily removed as the paint bubbles on the walls; what he feels goes deep, to the foundations.

“I will abstain as well,” Nicky says, and leaves it at that. Joe looks to him with several things in his eyes and Nicky accepts them all, holding them cupped in his hands.

“I don’t know if I entirely love the idea either, but all the same,” Andy says, “we might as well test the address he gave us—see if he’s sticking to his word there.”

“And if not?” Joe says.

Andy shrugs. “Then we’ll know. There’s not much to be done either way.”

With Andy’s word, they are decided.

***

Nicky is not there to witness the first time Nile makes the call to Booker; he is watching Joe paint.

In one thousand years, there is not a part of Joe that Nicky does not look to with affection. Even those that might have grated on him at first have become nothing but dear to Nicky as time has worn away at them both. There is a knowledge that comes with the years; Joe is so intimately known to him that it is simply impossible he dislike any piece: it is all just Joe.

That is not to say that there are not parts of him Nicky does not hold a more specific fondness for. Watching Joe now, painting the wall a bright yellow in broad strokes, Nicky is struck for what could very well be the millionth time with an admiration for his body. Not necessarily in a carnal way, though the ribbon of that desire runs faithfully through him as well, but at this moment, Nicky watches him as he would a ballet dancer. It is bliss, to see Joe’s shifts from left to right, the flick of his wrist as he discards excess paint, even his curses as a drop falls and hits the floor. Perhaps even especially that last time, as then Nicky is shown his laugh as well—a sight he will never tire of, this he knows in his bones.

“Are you listening to me, Nicky?” Joe says, his head not quite turned over his shoulder.

“Yes,” Nicky says, and he is telling the truth, in a way. He is listening very carefully to how Joe’s hand grips the handle of the brush, the way his legs and torso tense as he reaches to paint a higher spot. His words, however, have mostly escaped him. “I am always listening to you.”

“Of course.” The smile in Joe’s voice betrays him even if he remains facing the wall. “But did you hear what I said?”

“Ah, caught.”

“I have gotten much better at your game,” Joe says. “I was saying, you should let me paint something for you.”

“I have very good news.”

Joe flicks the brush at him, and Nicky can feel the yellow land in his hair. “You are a menace. No, _paint_ for you, something more than these bland walls.”

“What would you depict?” Nicky asks. With Joe, it is always something of a mixed bag, what draws his eye artistically. He is brilliant, of course, at capturing the human face and figure in drawing—sometimes, Nicky likes to think, the soul as well. Where Nicky’s dabbles into art have remained mostly rudimentary, Joe has studied under sculptors, painters, even a photographer to two. He is—wonderful, at creation.

“You’ll think me romantic—”

“I do already.”

“—but I was thinking, something older than any of us.”

“That is not an easy task—Egypt, then?”

“Older, if you can believe it—the Chauvet cave?”

Nicky smiles. “That would certainly have us beaten.”

“It is not hard to best us two, Nicolo,” Joe says, smiling around the original of Nicky’s many names. “We are nothing to this ancient earth.”

“We are only the marks we leave upon it, hm?”

“You draw my meaning so well I’d think you were the one who placed it in me.”

“That cannot be right,” Nicky says, “unless we placed them in each other.”

“And you have the gall to call me a romantic.”

“I cannot help the soul you put inside me,” Nicky says, smiling when Joe puts a hand to his chest in the mockery of receiving a great wound.

“You will strike me dead yet,” Joe says as he turns back to his work.

It is then that Nile comes down the stairs, so quickly that Nicky can feel it through his feet on the floor. She stops for a wild moment, looking to both of them, before promptly turning to make an exit via the back door. They stare after her.

“Perhaps we should—”

“I think she needs a moment.”

“She was on the call with Booker, yes?” At Nicky’s nod, Joe sighs. “Remember how I was against this?”

“He would not have said anything to purposefully upset her.”

“I know,” Joe says. “For all he will betray his family of 200 years, he would not be cruel.” There is a twist to his mouth when he says it, but Nicky recognizes he is being somewhat serious—Booker is entirely more miserable than he is unkind.

“She is mourning her family, perhaps he is helping her do so,” Nicky says.

“He’s a very experienced man in the matter,” Joe sighs and puts his brush down to come and sit on the couch as well. It is without looking that Nicky stretches across the unfathomable inches between them and clasps Joe’s hand with his own.

It’s impossible to know if they have waited long enough—or maybe if they have indeed waited too long—when they go to find Nile outside.

She is not crying this time; instead her face is merely tilted up to the sun, eyes closed. She doesn’t acknowledge them as they sit beside her.

When she does speak, it’s quiet. “He’s in France. He’s—” She waves a hand indistinctly.

“And how are you?” Joe says, gentle.

“I’m—I asked him about his family, right? He told me about them, and I talked about mine and I mean—I think it just made both of us sad,” she says, shaking her head. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

Nicky wants to offer Nile his hand again, but both of hers are currently holding tightly to her knees as if she’s using them to physically hold herself together.

“Are you certain?” Joe says. Nile turns to him quickly, eyes popping open.

“You’re the one who didn’t want me to talk to him at all!” She’s indignant, but the end of her statement is tilted up, questioning. “Now you want me to just dive back in even though it made both of us miserable?”

Joe shrugs. “It is better to be miserable with someone than miserable alone.” It hangs in the air for a moment.

“You’re worried about him,” Nile says, in a voice that says she has just realized this.

“Of course I’m worried about him,” Joe says. “You know a man for hundreds of years—a man like Booker, who drinks heavily when his football team experiences a loss—you will worry for him. I’m angry with him, I have not stopped loving him.”

“No,” Nile says, turning away from Joe. “I guess you haven’t.”

“We’re worried about you too, Nile,” Nicky says. “Did your conversation truly go so badly?”

She squints for a moment, considering. “I wasn’t lying, it was depressing as hell, am I glad I don’t have kids,” she says, resting her chin on her knees, “but it was also—good, I guess. Relieving, almost, to hear someone else talk about it. I felt less—alone.”

“Will you call him again?” Nicky says. He is mostly concerned for Nile in this moment, but a small part of him cries out to know more about Booker.

“Maybe. Probably.” She sighs. “I don’t know.”

“Probably make the bastard’s month,” Joe says.

Nile shoves him a bit with her shoulder. “Shut up, like you aren’t dying for me to get to the part where I tell you what he’s doing.”

“You could not be more wrong,” Joe says, smiling over Nile’s head at Nicky. It’s a little sad, but the spark of mirth that is so quintessential to Joe’s character is still present. “But if we’re on the topic already…”

Nile rolls her eyes. “He’s thinking about going to Mass again.”

“No!”

***

“Do you guys ever play sports together?” Nile says, her voice cutting through what was the hazy quiet afternoon air. “Or is it too tempting to like, dislocate someone’s spine to get a pass around them.”

“The rules change too often,” Nicky says, not looking up from the book he is reading.

“Don’t listen to Nicky, the old man does not represent us all,” Joe says from his position on the other end of the couch. “Do you play?”

“The only team sport I was ever good at was football,” she says, her eyes unfocused, voice somewhat wistful. “My brother and I would play with our cousins when they came to visit for holidays.”

“Football?” Joe says, and Nicky can hear the excitement in his voice.

“Ah, Nile, now you’ve gotten his hopes up,” he says, turning a page.

“Oh,” Joe says. “You meant _football_.” He mimes a throw and makes a face.

“Yeah, football, you can’t tackle someone to the ground in soccer.”

“Not in this century, at least,” Joe says.

“Would you like to?” Nicky asks. “Play, that is?”

“We don’t have a ball,” Nile says, but it’s not a no.

“We could get one, yes?” Nicky looks to Joe, who shrugs. “Yes.”

“The teams would be uneven,” Nile says. “Unless—do you think Andy’s up for a game?”

It is a good question; since Andy has shed her immortality, they have all been careful to keep her out of the way of any physical harm. It’s not that they think her suddenly made of glass, but more that Andy herself needs a period of adjustment to fully inhabit her now breakable body once more. Nicky has noticed she carries herself slightly differently now, with a bit more care. She is not as unthinking in her actions as she once was.

“I think she can be persuaded,” Joe says in a musing tone.

The game does not come together until days later, after they have scrounged up a ball from one of the stores in town. It is slightly smaller than it should be, Nile tells them, but it will do.

Teams form in a nebulous kind of way as they try different combinations until they land on the one that seems the most balanced. In the end, Nicky is paired with Nile, whose immediately apparent prowess makes up for Nicky’s complete lack of knowledge of the game.

“Okay,” Nile says, after hours of play. There is sweat dripping down the bridge of her nose from the humid late evening air—they have been playing for long enough that there are flashes in the air from the lightning bugs that hover around the trees. “You’re gonna be quarterback for this one—”

“That means I throw?” Nicky has only the barest grasp on the titles and positions being thrown around, but he will go where directed.

“Yeah, and I’ll run,” she draws one finger down her palm, shielding it from Joe and Andy with her body, “and cut back, to lose Andy. You’ve just gotta get the pass past Joe, alright?”

“Heavy task,” he says, and she raises an eyebrow. “Alright, alright.”

She tosses him the ball and he catches it like a punch, hands on it over his stomach. The oblong shape of it makes Nicky fumble more than he would like.

“Nicky,” Joe says, hands spread. “It’s not too late for you to defect to the winning team.”

“Impossible,” Nicky says, “seeing as we are several points ahead.” He has no idea if this is true.

“If Nicky doesn’t throw that ball in the next thirty seconds,” Andy calls from down the field, “I’m going to tackle the both of you.”

“Sorry boss,” Nicky calls back, then, before Joe can move any closer, “hike!”

Nile snaps into action as fast as he’s ever seen her on the battlefield, but Andy is on her just as quickly. The movement fades into something else in the hazy dark of the evening, something almost invisible.

Nicky watches this out of the corner of his eye, however, as most of his attention is stolen by Joe. Now this, this is a scenario Nicky has had much experience in. However, with his current objective, perhaps it is too much familiarity.

The grin on Joe’s face says he is thinking the same thing as Nicky; their knowledge of each others’ rhythms is so absolute that a false step or shoulder check is nowhere near enough to throw the other off. If they were on the same team, passes would be made without a flick of the eye in the other’s direction, but because they face each other it’s like trying to outsmart a mirror.

Nicky would feel guilty about the way he shoves one ankle under Joe’s to make him stumble, but the way their dance of feinting and blocking is going, the game practically dictates it. He only just manages to snap the pass to Nile before Joe’s hand shoots out to grab his arm and drag him down into the grass as well.

They go down hard, but the overgrown field cushions their fall. After a moment of scrabbling, Nicky finds himself looking down at Joe from atop his chest.

“Well,” Joe says with a grin that is both impossibly sharp and soft. “If this is where you wanted to end up, you needn't bother with the farce of a game.”

“Ah, but then it is too easy,” Nicky says.

“What’s this? You’re saying I am no challenge?” The grin has fallen completely to the side of softness now.

“I believe there is a modern phrase for you, Joe,” Nicky says, smiling. “You are, as they say, a sure thing.”

For perhaps the millionth time in their lives, Nicky’s gaze is caught on Joe’s throat as he laughs. “That I am.”

“If either of you guys care,” Nile’s voice comes from in front of them. “I made it to the end zone before Andy tackled me about two feet into the ground.”

Nicky breaks his focus on Joe’s throat to look at her. She’s covered in grass stains and not a little dirt, but she’s smiling. Andy stands beside her, with a smear of soil on her cheekbone. In the fading light, they look both very sweaty and very content—the same feeling echoes from somewhere inside Nicky’s chest.

“Let me up so I can congratulate the winner,” Joe says.

“You can congratulate me from right here.”

“What did you do?” Joe says. “Get tackled to the ground?”

“Oh,” Nicky says, pushing himself off of Joe’s chest, “was that what that was? A tackle?”

“Either way, we did win, right?” Nile says. “We were ahead like three touchdowns.”

“You were ahead one touchdown,” Andy says, “before Joe and I got back in the lead by two.”

“Uh, when?” Nile says. “And don’t try to pull any ‘I’m immortal, Nile, I notice everything’ shit, because none of you even knew the rules until a couple hours ago.”

“I feel I have to side with Nile on this one,” Nicky says, pulling his face into something apologetic. “Centuries of record keeping allow me to definitively say: we won by three points.”

“Okay, _one_ person is allowed the immortal superiority complex thing.”

Nicky goes up to their room at the end of the night lighter than he’s felt in weeks. The combination of Nile’s grin and the warm summer air washes him clean in a way that goes deep, to his bones. He turns to remark on his ablution to Joe, but gets no further than opening his mouth when he feels arms around his waist.

“Ah,” Nicky says, with a smile. “The game was not enough to exhaust you?”

“Alas, no,” Joe says, sliding one hand under Nicky’s shirt to trace lightly up his side. It leaves goosebumps in its wake. “I’m afraid it would be impossible for me to sleep now.”

Save a desperate fumble the night after returning from Merrick’s lab, they haven’t done much of this. There has been too much clouding the air above their heads, leaving them to choke on their own sorrow and resentments—such is not a mood for lovemaking.

It is dissipated now, here in the bubble of this moment as Joe traces his lips up Nicky’s neck to a place under his jaw that they are both very familiar with. Tonight, as Joe presses his lips and the barest hint of teeth to the spot, Nicky cannot help but sigh.

“Mm,” Joe hums into his skin. “I would spend centuries doing just this.”

“Have we not already?” Nicky says, his eyes drifting closed.

“Somehow,” Joe says, moving back down his neck, “we have been swayed instead to use our time in the pursuit of,” a lingering kiss on the junction of Nicky’s neck and shoulder, “the betterment of man.”

“A waste, if I could have had you like this instead,” Nicky says, and almost means it. By the way Joe turns him around in his arms, Nicky thinks he might be able to tell.

“I must see your face if you’re going to say things like that, Nico,” Joe says with the exact smile that Nicky first fell in love with. It is not long for his face, however, as Nicky leans in to kiss him at last.

There are few things greater than kissing Joe, than the feeling of being wrapped up in him. With his hands on Joe’s chest and Joe’s arms around his waist, Nicky feels as though he is losing the borders to himself and becoming something new, something that only exists when he is held so completely.

Nicky has so wholly lost himself that the feeling of their bed behind him comes as a surprise. “Joe,” he says in between kisses. “Our clothes—the dirt.”

“There’s an easy fix for that,” Joe says, lifting Nicky’s shirt from the bottom.

“Ah, your game all along,” he says, but makes short work of discarding it as Joe does the same. Nicky is reaching for him again before Joe has managed to drop his shirt to the floor. He runs his palms up Joe’s chest, pausing to thumb at his nipples. Nicky sits back a little to admire Joe’s reaction, how his exhale becomes a groan, how his eyes flutter shut slightly. He cannot stay away for long, however.

“Nicky.” Nicky hums in response, mapping his own way down Joe’s throat now. “Let me—please.”

Nicky breaks away a moment to cradle Joe’s face and look him directly in the eye, thumbs brushing along his cheekbones. “Whatever you like—you know I am yours completely.”

Joe looks at him with a soft smile and an emotion in his eyes that would have frightened Nicky if this were one thousand years ago. “I know.”

“Good,” Nicky says, and fits their mouths back together.

The bed is easy to fall back into, so they do, Nicky’s thighs bracketed by Joe’s. The weight of him is comfortable, familiar, and yet still rouses something eager inside Nicky, something that longs to be fed. He presses a hand to Joe’s back, his fingers splayed, suddenly aching for him to be even closer. He wants to swallow him whole.

It is then, of course, that Joe breaks the kiss. Nicky cannot help the slight whine that escapes him as Joe moves away, but it elicits only a huff of laughter. “I will be back, Nico, give me one moment.” Nicky hears the sound of their bedside table drawer opening and closing. “Forgive me, you know I love you in all ways,” Joe says, “but I have especially missed you like this.”

“I have gone to bed with a troubadour,” Nicky says, a grin fighting its way onto his face. Luckily, Joe leans in again before it can become rampant.

They have done this so many times that their movements from here would be perfectly smooth, but for the way Nicky cannot stop clinging to every part of Joe. Here, under him, in his arms, Nicky feels at once starving and sated. He burns, and the only thing to be done for it is touching Joe anyplace he can: his back, his shoulders, the swell of his ass. His face, with lingering fingertips. Nicky has him memorized, of course, but the flesh and blood of Joe in his arms is far better than any recollection.

Joe opens his mouth to speak again, but Nicky beats him to it. “Fuck me.” It feels punched out of him. “Please.”

“Yes,” Joe says. “Yes, yes.”

It moves quickly after that, in a blur of Joe’s hands and lips. They have long been experts in each others’ pleasure, but that does not mean the air is not stolen from Nicky’s lungs upon the first time Joe slides home.

It takes no time at all before Nicky’s neck is arched back against the bed, eyes closed tightly to the feeling of Joe. It is this, that he returns to again and again, this which he orbits—the combination of their selves, when they are truly too close to be separate creatures. He feels his heart beat in Joe’s chest.

“I love you,” Joe says, and Nicky is drawn out of his rapture to look at him. He is staring intently at Nicky, as he has tended to do in this particular act since they began their practice of it. Nicky grasps Joe’s hand where it is spread on his chest. “If I were to lose you—”

“You will never lose me,” Nicky interrupts him. “I am yours—only yours.”

“You are mine.” Joe is losing his rhythm slightly now. “Nicky, Nicolo, I—” The rest of his speech is lost to a groan as Nicky winds a hand through his hair and tugs. “You murder me, Nicolo.”

One of Nicky’s hands migrates to Joe’s shoulder and he grips it hard. “A—ah—thousand little deaths?”

“A thousand?” Joe’s hand squeezes once where it is under Nicky’s knee. “You are underestimating yourself severely—the mere sight of you is enough to strike me dead.”

Nicky smiles, though he feels it go a bit wild on his face as one of Joe’s thrusts drives particularly home. “Enough with your words, show me you mean them,” he gasps out. They don’t need to look to each other to know that such a command is unnecessary—their hands tangled together on Nicky’s chest say enough—but they do anyway. As his eyes rove over Joe’s well-known face, Nicky is in love with him, is loved by him, is completely undone.

All things must end, and this does spectacularly, with Nicky’s fingers tightly wound in Joe’s hair and Joe’s hand on Nicky’s hip so securely it would leave bruises for days if they were different men. In the aftermath, Joe bumps his forehead slightly against Nicky’s, who tilts his face up to kiss Joe once more.

“I love you,” Nicky says, the words just substantial enough to carry themselves the distance to Joe’s ears. It is not an announcement; it is for them alone, a verbalization of what they both already know.

They are so close Nicky feels rather than sees Joe smile. “Do you wait to confess until the end on purpose, my love?”

“Yes,” Nicky says. “I cannot compete with your words when you are not even thinking of me, much less when you are in the throes of passion. This is the only time I have any chance.”

“Yes?” Joe says, stifling a yawn. “Woo me now, then.”

Nicky hums in consideration. “If there were anything I could say to capture your heart, I would have said it upon first meeting you,” Nicky says, tracing a directionless hand up and down Joe’s back. “But you offered it to me with open hands—I have done nothing since then but fight to deserve it. I will do so for the rest of my life—it is the single most precious thing I own.”

“Not bad.”

“Your judgement is muddled.”

Joe hums in dissent. “My heart knows very well what it has chosen. I have not regretted a day.” Nicky looks at him—the smooth expanse of his back, the wrinkles around his eyes that have not changed since they met—and feels so deeply content he knows they are not merely speaking in metaphor.

“Nor I.”

***

The first thing Nicky notices when Andy sits next to him at the kitchen table is how her hair has gotten longer. It’s at a transitional stage, pieces of it jutting out at awkward angles, too short or too long to lay completely flat. She has it pulled back in a haphazard way that leaves much of it limp on the back of her neck; it’s funny, what shows the passing of time on their deathless bodies.

“Tiles again, huh?”

“Don’t try to dissuade him,” Joe says from the stove, where Nile is trying to teach him how to fry eggs the way she likes. “Even I can’t get him off the idea.”

“Those were for the floor,” Nicky says, gesturing to where the patterned tiles now lay beneath their feet. They had taken weeks to install, but now they all walk barefoot on cold ceramic. Despite what he had threatened Joe, they are a solid deep blue interrupted at intervals by a white tile Nicky has painted by hand. He had favored birds in his designs, peacocks, swallows, even, by Nile’s suggestion, a penguin or two. “These are for the, the—” He snaps his fingers, the word escaping him.

“Backsplash?” Andy suggests, looking down at the designs Nicky has drawn.

“Yes,” he says. “That is a very stupid word.”

“But how did _she_ know it?” Nile says.

“Blue again?” Andy says, ignoring the question.

Nicky hums. “Too much blue. Since Nile will not let me get rid of the green countertops—”

“I like them!”

“—I was thinking white. Unless Joe repents and allows me orange?”

“Not if we live another thousand years,” Joe says, plating his eggs.

Nicky looks back to Andy and shrugs. He is caught a little by the look on her face, however—where it was light a moment ago, her expression is now twisted.

“Boss?” He pitches it quietly, so as to not draw the attention of Joe and Nile across the room, but it has the opposite effect—the lowness of his voice cuts through the room and leaves only silence in its wake.

“Andy?” Nile echoes when she doesn’t respond. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Andy says and rolls her eyes when their concerned expressions don’t change. “I’ve just been thinking about it, not being here to see the next thousand years.”

Nile crosses the kitchen in quick strides to sit beside her. Joe is not far behind. “Andy,” Nile says. “You’ve got time to figure out what that means for you, none of us are expecting—”

“I already know what I’m going to do with the rest of my time,” Andy says. “What I’ve always done. You said it before—saving those people, creating new generations of life, that ripple effect—that’s the why.”

“And I meant it,” Nile says. “But—” She looks to Joe and Nicky, with an expression that says _help me out._

“Andy, we already mourn for the day we’ll be without you,” Joe says. “Have pity on a very old man and don’t do anything to hasten that date.”

“You’ve seen the way things are,” Andy says. “What little help I can provide, I have to—what am I without that?”

“You are the people you’ve already saved,” Nicky says. “Can you let them hold the weight of the world for a while and just stay with us?”

There’s something warring in Andy’s expression, something that remains there for several seconds. At last, she draws a hand down her face. “How do I cope with this, then? What do I do?”

“You stay with us,” Nile says, quick to answer. “You cook with us, you help us paint, you teach me how you tackle someone into the crust of the earth—and when we’re all ready for it, you’ll teach us how to save the world.”

Andy laughs a bit, shaking her head. “You’ve seen the shit you’ve have and still think it can be saved?” she says, and then tilts her head again. “Actually, if you’re still thinking like that, it might just be possible.”

“We can’t do it without you, boss,” Nicky says.

“Not yet, anyway,” Joe is quick to back him up.

“You can’t do it with me, either.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Nile says, “even if you can’t be the first one in the door anymore. It’s okay to let that fall to us.”

Andy looks at her a moment. “You’re so—young.”

Nile bristles a little at that. “What, I’m too young to understand?”

“No,” Andy says. “You’re young enough to be exactly what the world needs. This shitshow, it’s going to eat you up over and over again, but you’re going to bounce back every time.”

“You gotta show me how first,” Nile says.

“No, I don’t,” Andy says, and then sighs. “But I guess I’m sticking around to see it.”

***

“So,” Nile says. “How uncomfortable should I be prepared to be?”

“That depends,” Joe says. “How much of a bastard is he going to be?”

“As little one as possible, I think he’s on the brink of being to scared of fucking things up worse to even speak to you guys.”

“That’s a good start,” Joe says and Nile flicks at his arm a little.

The phone sits on the table like a weapon. Nile speaking to Booker is one thing, the two of them finding some sort of solace in each other, but even after several months, Nicky wonders if his own wounds are still too raw for conversation. However, he cannot deny the piece of him that longs to know how Booker is, if he’s sleeping, eating, drinking. After a very long discussion between he, Joe, and Nile, they have decided it is time to at least try. So now, though they may not be completely ready for it, he and Joe join Nile on her weekly call.

“You guys can leave at any time,” Nile says. “Like, any time. He lapses into really old-fashioned French a lot, so I get if that’s the dealbreaker.”

“You speak French?” Nicky says.

She makes a face. “Only under duress.”

Joe laughs. “Smart woman—Nicky is lucky he did not hail from France, it would have been much harder to make amends then.”

“So you were partial to the Italian, then?”

“I would not go so far.”

The phone call strikes Nicky, as modern technology sometimes does, as something of a marvel. Several taps on black glass and their voices are transported to somewhere in France.

“Hello?”

“Hey Booker,” Nile says, voice steady despite the way she’s fiddling with the hem of her t-shirt.

“Nile,” he says, and even though the phone distorts his voice slightly, making it staticky and distant, the warmth there is evident. “How are you?”

“Good, yeah,” she says. “I tried reading that play you recommended.”

“Yes? What did you think?”

“I wish I could tell you—my French is not up to that, like, at all.”

“Ah,” Booker says. “It’s a good thing French is the easiest—and most useful—language to learn.”  
Nile rolls her eyes. “Right, thanks for your completely neutral opinion.”

Hearing them talk, it’s immediately apparent that Nile’s decision was the right one. It’s impossible that they reach such easy speech after only a few months and yet, they have. Indeed, since the beginning of the call, Nile’s posture has slumped into something that Nicky recognizes from after a game or a meal or a movie. She’s—comfortable.

“So, uh,” she says after their conversation has reached a lull. Suddenly the tension is back in her spine. “Do you want me to stick around for this next bit, or?”

“Yes,” Joe and Booker say within a moment of each other. Joe follows it up with, “if you’d like, that is.”

“If you could switch to a language I don’t understand when you get shouty,” Nile says, “I would appreciate that.”

“Of course,” Joe says with a smile.

For a moment, the only sound in the air is the ambient noise coming from Booker’s end of the call and the raspy quality it acquires from the miles of land and sea it has traveled. For a moment, the silence seems to big to be breached—Nicky feels it wrapping around them and decides to break it before it can truly sink into their skin.

“Booker,” he says, then feels abruptly the inadequacy of anything that might follow. “Hello.”

“Nicky.” Booker’s voice holds too many things to be identified—fear, hope, the ever-present sadness. It is a balm. “How—how are you?”

“I am well,” Nicky says, and it’s not a lie as it might have been a few months ago. He truly is, with Joe and Andy and Nile, content. “And you, you are—” he veers abruptly away from asking after Booker’s health and lands instead on, “in France?”

Booker laughs like he knew what Nicky truly meant to ask. “Oui, oui. But I will not bore you with those details.”

“No, no, please,” Nicky says, realizing once more how hungry he is for news of his friend. “We are in America; your description will be a blessing.”

“Hey,” Nile says. “Fuck off, you were comparing a cow pasture to the Italian countryside the other day, don’t get high and mighty.”

“You see what depths we’ve plunged to?” Nicky says to the phone and is rewarded with a short laugh from Booker.

It worries him, slightly, that Joe has not yet spoken. Nicky knows him to be vocal about his anger, yes, but he can hold it silently as well. When it is something such as this, something that came so close to irreparable harm, Nicky is not surprised by his tightened lips. He himself is not entirely sure if the call will prove to be worth the pain of confrontation. It had seemed wise, though, to try now at least. If it truly goes very badly, they can always attempt it again in a decade or two.

“So, Nicky,” Booker says. “I hear you’re renovating?”

Nicky opens his mouth to reply, but before he can form the words, Joe breaks his silence.

“How can you laugh with us?” His voice is measured, but the hand he has spread on the tabletop is whitening at the fingertips. “How can you, after what you’ve done?”

“Joe,” Booker says. He sounds tired. “I can’t apologize enough for it, for what happened.”

“No, you can’t.”

“But,” Booker continues, “I am doing everything I can, now, to make amends. I know you don’t want to see me and truly, I don’t want to return until I can—until I am not the man who betrayed you. But I swear to you, I will reach that point.”

“How will that happen?” Joe says, and it’s a genuine question. “How will you replace the boards of yourself?”

“He’s already doing it,” Nile says. “He—I don’t know what I would be doing without him.” Her eyes are incredibly earnest.

“Joe, I am not asking for anything more than the opportunity to rebuild myself,” Booker says. “I will come back to you a new man, I swear it.”

For a moment, Nicky watches as the anger remains in Joe’s body, holding him stiff and upright. Then, he sighs, slumping with the exhaled air, the fight visibly draining out of him. He laughs, a little ruefully. “Perhaps not so new a man you can’t watch the game with me, hm?” It’s a peace offering, an admittance of the ache Booker has left.

“If I lost that, what would I be good for?” Booker says. The relief painting his voice conveys that he knows exactly what Joe means.

As Nile takes back charge of the conversation, Nicky leans further into Joe with a smile he neither can nor wants to conceal. Joe looks up to his intrusion with an upward turn to his lips before bumping the side of his head gently against Nicky’s and leaning into him as well.

After the phone call comes to an end, Nile looks at them. “Well?”

“He’s still a bastard,” Joe says.

“That won’t improve,” Nicky says from where his head now rests on Joe’s shoulder. “Not if he’s staying in France.”

“But he’s your French bastard,” Nile says. “Right?”

“Hm,” Joe says. “At this point, it would be rude of us to inflict him on someone else.” Nicky hums his agreement.

“Would—do you want join in on the call again? Next week?” Nile’s voice sounds so hopeful that it stabs at Nicky’s heart a little.

“Perhaps,” Nicky says, “give us a month.”

“Three months,” Joe says.

“One and a half.”

“You are ruthless, Nicky—two months.”

“Okay, okay,” Nile says, but she is grinning. “I’ll tell him to expect you somewhere between—six and eight business weeks?”

“Oh,” Joe says, and Nicky can hear the glint in his eye. “Have they weeks in France? I could have sworn they were using units of ten the last time I checked.”

“Is this a history thing?” Nile says.

“Five to six décades, then,” Nicky says. “And tell him to give my regards to Robespierre.”

“Oh yes,” Joe says. “Best of luck to him.”

“You guys are insufferable,” Nile says, but the corner of her mouth is twitching. “I don’t know why he wants to talk to you at all.”

“He was Catholic, yes?” Joe says. “The more punishing the experience the better.”

“You’re gonna let that stand?” Nile says, looking to Nicky.

“He’s right,” Nicky shrugs. “Why else would I still be with him after these 900 years?”

“That argument’s a bit weakened by the fact your head’s been on his shoulder for the last twenty minutes,” Nile says.

“Mm,” Nicky says, and doesn’t bother hiding his smile as Joe laughs.

***

The air is crisp as they load up the car, summer finally becoming autumn once again. Here in the midwestern states, the change is very apparent—the oppressive heat of one day breaks into the breezy cold of the next with little warning. The tips of the once green trees are beginning to redden and the misty cloud of the sky hangs low enough to completely conceal the top of a nearby radio tower. Nicky breathes it in for a moment, taking in the view of the house. It looks very different from when they’d first arrived—the porch boasts new railings, the house itself a new coat of paint. They had, at Joe’s insistence, planted coneflowers in the bright sun around the driveway. There are fewer blooms now, but the ones that persist bob cheerfully in the cool wind, a few spots of summer color in the rapidly graying fall world.

“I worry about the gutters,” Nicky says half to himself, hands in his pockets.

“The ones you’ve cleared out three times already?” Joe says, looking at him from over the hood of the car.

“Only twice.”

“But that was enough to break your arm in three places, hm?” Nicky looks to him with a flat expression—yes, he had fallen from the ladder the second time, but the injury had only lasted as long as their injuries tend to, and only barely needed to be reset for a quicker heal.

“Unlike my wounds, the gutters will not heal themselves,” Nicky says. “Imagine the strain on the roof they’ll cause after several years away.”

“Horrible,” Joe says with a grin. “Too grisly to picture.”

Nicky can feel the corner of his mouth inching upwards as he looks at Joe—they remain there, caught in each other’s gaze, for a period that might seem lengthy to someone without their experience.

“Worried about anything else, then?”

Nicky hums. “The paint will surely bubble again,” he says.

Joe groans. “With any luck, this house will collapse long before we must come back and fix that again.”

Nicky looks back to what they’ve been calling home these past several months. He can see through the curtain of one of the upstairs windows that a light remains on—Nile’s room. Soon, it will switch off to be dark for an indefinite amount of time, and Nile will pile in the car with the rest of them, on their way to whatever is next. She will want the passenger seat, ostensibly to give directions, but in reality to control what’s playing on the car’s ancient radio. Andy will sit wherever she is most dangerous, which is any seat of the car. She wears a seatbelt now though, most times. Nicky and Joe will fill in where they are needed, always together, always a self-orbiting piece of the larger group of moving parts. Someday, there will be a seat in the car for Booker as well.

“I will miss it,” Nicky says, and he means it about both the house itself, the one they’ve built, and the time they had together to create it. The time they had to learn each other, for the first time and once again.

Joe draws a deep breath through his nose and lets it out. “Me too,” he says, and Nicky knows without asking he means it in both senses.

The front door bursts opens to reveal Andy and Nile, each shouldering their own nondescript bag. “Shotgun,” Nile says before she’s even made it off the porch steps. “Absolutely shotgun.”

“Not a thought for the poor cramped knees of your elders, huh?” Joe says, catching the keys Andy tosses to him.

“Nuh-uh,” she says. “Not where twelve hours in the car is concerned.”

“Can I sleep this time,” Andy says, “or are we to be subjected to the radio again?”

“No sleeping until at least the highway, sorry,” Nile says, tossing her bag in the trunk. “I thought of a new album you’ve all gotta hear.”

“Will it be…” Nicky trails off.

“From this century? Yeah,” Nile says with a grin that Nicky both cherishes and, where their clashing tastes are concerned, dreads.

As they pull out of the driveway and onto the road, Nicky watches over his shoulder until the house becomes completely concealed by the surrounding trees. He glances away to meet Joe’s eyes in the rearview, which wink when they meet his gaze. Nicky smiles. The car is full of them, not only their bodies, but their friendship, their family.

With the windows down and Nile’s music filling the air, they drive on.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! If you could not tell, yes I am from Missouri, yes I have worked at hyvee, yes I am going to romanticize the hell out of both of those things. Rise up midwest nation!  
> I took this uquiz a bit ago that was like which literary device are you? and I got “the setting as a character” and like, proofreading this…..yeah. the midwest is hell but boy if she’s not pretty sometimes
> 
> I’ll probably be adding to this series again sometime, these dynamics are really fun and interesting to explore………I hope I’m doing them justice


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